Tag: taxes

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Elon Musk Cops No Subsidy

Apparently Elon Musk is on-board with getting rid of the $7500 federal tax break for electric vehicles. (Some Tesla models have some Chinese components and don’t qualify, so it won’t affect him as much as it will GM and Ford).

Why? Musk wants to get rid of ALL government subsidies for all enterprises. Hey, I’m on board with that! The oil industry gets $20 billion a year. Consumers will have to pick up the slack at the pump. The movie industry gets massive state subsidies as localities compete against each other to get Jennifer Lopez and Leonardo Di Caprio to come visit. Best of all, no more tax-payer subsidized sports stadiums. And no more states luring GM and Ford to build their plants in union-unfriendly Kentucky or Tennessee. Detroit will be happy.

I will believe it when I see it. Most likely, they will only try to remove subsidies for industries that benefit the consumer or the environment, but I’m open-minded.

I also hear that the Trump administration wants credit card interest rates dropped to no more than 10%. That might make up for Walmart having to increase their prices because of tariffs on Chinese goods (70% of Walmart’s products come from China).

Gosh, it’s going to be interesting.

The only time in history in which the working classes dramatically improved their economic status was the period after World War II up to the Ronald Reagan era (1980). Since then, under both Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, the working classes’ income level and prosperity has been stagnant, while the investor class has seen lavish increases in wealth.

It is a mass hallucination to believe working class people improved their lot from 2016-2020, but inflation did eat away their income from 2020-2024.

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Ayn Ryan

“Even as House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget would impose trillions of dollars in spending cuts, at least 62 percent of which would come from low-income programs, it would enact new tax cuts that would provide huge windfalls to households at the top of the income scale. New analysis by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center finds that people earning more than $1 million a year would receive $265,000 apiece in new tax cuts, on average, on top of the $129,000 they would receive from the Ryan budget’s extension of President Bush’s tax cuts. The new tax cuts at the top would dwarf those for middle-income families. After-tax incomes would rise by 12.5 percent among millionaires, but just 1.8 percent for middle-income households. Low-income working families would actually be hit with tax increases.” The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

We should always be disturbed when liberals and conservatives rejoice at the same the news. Or at least wary.

Do conservatives believe that most people would support a far right conservative fiscal policy if it was honestly and openly presented to them? I think they do. I think they are very mistaken. I think it was no accident that George W. Bush did not campaign on a policy of cutting taxes on the rich and making war on Iraq. That was his agenda, but he campaigned on tax cuts for everyone, improving education, and drilling for more oil. The only thing he actually achieved, aside from destroying the entire world economy, was the tax cuts for the rich, which he didn’t advertise. Republicans never announce those tax cuts as tax cuts for the rich. They announce “tax cuts for all Americans” and then only cut taxes for the rich and then, having created a massive deficit, they announce program cuts for the poor. Now, with Ryan, the target is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Social Security, by the way, is perfectly solvent. Social Security is this incredibly rational little plan to have employees and employers each put a certain amount of money into a fund every pay period for a person’s entire working life. When this person gets old, he is able to draw from this fund to live off of. Can you imagine a more rational social policy? It’s positively ingenius. Does it work? Hell yeah! No government or private policy in the history of the world has reduced poverty more than social security.

And no conservative policy is more sinister than the one to destroy it. Conservatives say, we can’t have it. We can’t allow people to benefit from rational policies. We must destroy them! Because, you see, we all pay in to Social Security. Even if you are rich. Even if, like Mitt Romney, you are so rich, you will never need Social Security.

The massive current government deficit– Bush inherited a surplus from Bill Clinton and immediately converted it into a deficit with his tax cuts for the rich and wars on Afghanistan and Iraq– is seen by the Republicans as the best opportunity in years to try to convince Americans that we can’t afford Social Security or Medicare.

I think about that a lot. If the Republicans are right, we live in a world in which millions of people must live in poverty without medical care of any kind. That is the only possible outcome of Republican policy in this area.

The real “death panel” is Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan planning to gut the only health insurance plan for poor Americans.

I don’t really see the logic of Paul Ryan as Romney’s running mate. Obama and Romney are running neck-in-neck among decided voters and the only way either of them can win is by winning a majority of the independent voters. Who these independent voters are is a bit of a mystery: who, in his or her right mind, in this election, could possibly still not know how he or she is going to vote for yet? What are they waiting for?

What is clear is that they are not ideologically committed, so they are not going to warm up to Romney because he chose an extremist as running mate. Ryan plays well to a constituency Romney already owns: the hard right. He is not going to play well to seniors in Florida, women in Pennsylvania, blacks in Michigan, or Hispanics in Colorado. He has nothing for any of them. He doesn’t really have any thing for white working-class Americans either but they don’t seem to understand that. “If you vote for me, I’ll wack you in the face with a spiked two-by-four.” “I’m in.” “Plus, you get a chance to go overseas and get paralyzed by an ungrateful Arab.” “Woo hoo! Can’t wait.”

By the way, don’t buy all this horseshit about Ryan being the “intellectual” heart of the Republican Party. He is a hack: someone who has absorbed something of the language and style of policy but, in the end, draws absurd conclusions that are completely rooted in his fervent emotional beliefs– not in science or rationality. I believe Romney will soon find himself backing away from Ryan’s budget and his other positions. [Aug 28, yes he is.]

That’s why it’s a bit hard to stomach Romney/Ryan claiming that they are the ones who want to have a serious discussion of the issues in this election. It’s always good strategy to accuse your opponent of your own cardinal vice, especially if you can do it before you become identified with it.

There could be a good debate. There is a fundamental issue at stake in this election. Is America a nation in which citizens pull together for the common good, or in which every person looks out for his or her own interests. The only flaw in this debate is that the Republicans don’t mean it, and they never did. They talk about self-reliance and individual responsibility but that’s for you and me. Once they get into power they fall over themselves cutting lavish tax breaks– which are subsidies in everything but name– for their corporate puppet masters, buying up bushels of new, hi-tech weapons systems from other corporate puppet masters, and shifting more and more of the tax burden on the working classes. This is not personal responsibility: it’s a plutocracy.

And of course, neither Romney nor Ryan served in the military: that is a personal responsibility conservatives invariably offload onto the shoulders of credulous patriots, while they hire the brass bands and salute the flag with contrived expressions of piety.

 

2012-08-10

Index

“Even as House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s budget would impose trillions of dollars in spending cuts, at least 62 percent of which would come from low-income programs, it would enact new tax cuts that would provide huge windfalls to households at the top of the income scale. New analysis by the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center finds that people earning more than $1 million a year would receive $265,000 apiece in new tax cuts, on average, on top of the $129,000 they would receive from the Ryan budget’s extension of President Bush’s tax cuts. The new tax cuts at the top would dwarf those for middle-income families. After-tax incomes would rise by 12.5 percent among millionaires, but just 1.8 percent for middle-income households. Low-income working families would actually be hit with tax increases.” The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

We should always be disturbed when liberals and conservatives rejoice at the same the news. Or at least wary.

Do conservatives believe that most people would support a far right conservative fiscal policy if it was honestly and openly presented to them? I think they do. I think they are very mistaken. I think it was no accident that George Bush did not campaign on a policy of cutting taxes on the rich and making war on Iraq. That was his agenda, but he campaigned on tax cuts for everyone, improving education, and drilling for more oil. The only thing he actually achieved, aside from destroying the entire world economy, was the tax cuts for the rich, which he didn’t advertise. Republicans never announce those tax cuts as tax cuts for the rich. They announce “tax cuts for all Americans” and then only cut taxes for the rich and then, having created a massive deficit, they announce program cuts for the poor. Now, with Ryan, the target is Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Social Security, by the way, is perfectly solvent. Social Security is this incredibly rational little plan to have employees and employers each put a certain amount of money into a fund every pay period for a person’s entire working life. When this person gets old, he is able to draw from this fund to live off of. Can you imagine a more rational social policy? It’s positively ingenius. Does it work? Hell yeah! No government or private policy in the history of the world has reduced poverty more than social security.

And no conservative policy is more sinister than the one to destroy it. Conservatives say, we can’t have it. We can’t allow people to benefit from rational policies. We must destroy them! Because, you see, we all pay in to Social Security. Even if you are rich. Even if, like Mitt Romney, you are so rich, you will never need Social Security.

The massive current government deficit– Bush inherited a surplus from Bill Clinton and immediately converted it into a deficit with his tax cuts for the rich and wars on Afghanistan and Iraq– is seen by the Republicans as the best opportunity in years to try to convince Americans that we can’t afford Social Security or Medicare.

I think about that a lot. If the Republicans are right, we live in a world in which millions of people must live in poverty without medical care of any kind. That is the only possible outcome of Republican policy in this area.

The real “death panel” is Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan planning to gut the only health insurance plan for poor Americans.

 

All Contents Copyright © Bill Van Dyk 2012 All Rights Reserved

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Social Security

This piece of common sense is so obvious that I’m pretty sure most people assume it is already the law. It isn’t: every government and corporation should be required to set aside in an independently managed fund all of the monies required to fully vest the pension commitments of the organization. There. Simple. Under no circumstances should the government or a corporation be allowed to ever, ever touch that money.

I am aware of the fact that at the beginning of Social Security, the government actually had to pay out to people who had never contributed money it had never collected for the program.

Your are astonished? You mean they don’t have to? You mean the government can simply collect the money required for these pensions and then spend as much of it as it wants on other things– like bizarre failed weapons systems or wars– while promising that future governments will make up the difference?

And thus we have Illinois. And Republicans claiming– it’s an outright lie– that Social Security is unsustainable. In fact, there is nothing more sustainable than Social Security, if the government would simply pay it back for all the money it stole out of the system so that Mitch McConnell could use it so he could claim to not raise taxes and still– miraculously– spend more money on Homeland Security and the military.

The Republicans act as if Social Security is funded by general revenue, so you are not really entitled to it. But Social Security was not instituted to fund general government programs. It was instituted specifically to collect your contribution to your future retirement needs. The U.S. government has been borrowing this money for years to fund other government expenditures– like the stealth bomber or the Mitch McConnell Freeway.

I suspect that a Republican government will try to find some way to keep the revenue stream without keeping the benefit. That is what they do. A tax on the working class with an upper ceiling is a Republican’s wet dream.

By the way, I’m not averse to the idea that the independence of pension funds should go two ways. The rate at which employers and employees contribute to the fund should be wisely and carefully crafted, and the benefits received should also be wisely and carefully crafted and the brains should carefully establish the correct rates and then it should all be locked in.

That means that if inflation eats away at the value of those pensions, the price of security is that they will not be adjusted beyond the rate fixed in the original agreement. That means it could be adjusted, but only if the possibility of it was factored into the original terms of the plan, including the potential costs.

That means, yes, some pensioners might be disadvantaged by high inflation at some point– but I don’t think that’s an unreasonable price to pay for real security. (I’m not going to go into it here, but people then also should be aware of the government using inflation as a tool to reduce the real cost of their obligations.)

Yeah, it’s complicated.

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Born Again in Alabama

The born-again Baptist governor is telling voters in this Bible Belt state that their tax system, which imposes an effective rate of 3 percent on the wealthiest Alabamians and 12 percent on the poorest, is “immoral” and needs repair. “When I read the New Testament, there are three things we’re asked to do: That’s love God, love each other and take care of the least among us,” Riley said in his office in the antebellum state Capitol. Washington Post, August 15, 2003

That is amazing. A conservative, Baptist, Republican– Bob Riley–, a devout Christian governor who actually reads the bible. And the real bible– not the Americanized manifest destiny edition of low taxes, capitalism, and bigotry.

The rest of Alabama is devout and Christian but didn’t notice anything in the bible about fairness or justice. They were convinced, by some flimsy advertisements put out by some rich dudes, that an increase in taxes would be ungodly. The poor should take care of themselves.

And I guess they probably aren’t really all that embarrassed about being just about the lowest in the nation in high school standardized test scores because Riley had to submit at least part of his tax plan to a referendum and it failed by a large margin.

 

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Mr. Taxman

I sometimes think that if I were a rich man living in the United States, I would not pay any taxes. Why bother?

According to the I.R.S., about 80% of the individuals known to ignore their tax bills are never investigated, let alone prosecuted. The I.R.S. claims to know of about 80 businesses, for example, who have openly declared that they don’t believe tax law applies to them. Now, if a business declares that the tax law does not apply to them, and they are businesses, after all, wouldn’t you have one of your crack investigators at least have a look?

You might think this sounds rather silly. Doesn’t it, though? Ha ha. Billions of dollars in tax money is just sitting out there in private accounts, uncollected, while schmucks like you and I pay our fair share and make it possible for us to have roads and schools and armies and baseball stadiums and weapons of mass destruction.

And you would think that even an idiot can see that if the I.R.S. would hire a few more investigators, they could easily collect a good portion of the outstanding billions in tax liabilities just sitting out there. Enough to easily pay for the salaries of the additional inspectors and then some.

Not going to happen. Why not? Because though not a single Republican campaigns on the idea of eliminating taxes for those who don’t wish to pay them (nudge nudge, wink wink), they have been busy defunding the I.R.S. for years, cutting the numbers of investigators and reducing the I.R.S.’s ability to enforce the government’s own tax laws. They like it that way.

It’s just another facet of the war in America. The war of the rich upon the poor and middle class. The battle is over who pays for highways and police and armies and baseball stadiums. The rich shouldn’t have to pay. They can just live in their gated communities, and be driven to other gated communities, like the opera or ballet, in their chauffeur-driven Lincoln SUVs.

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The Capital Gains Deduction

The “capital gains deduction”.

Do you have any idea of how absolutely outrageous this idea is? I’ll bet you don’t. That’s why wealthy corporations and citizens have seized upon it. They think they can pull one over on us. And they might be right. Because you don’t know how outrageous this idea is.

A lot of businessmen in Canada in the U.S. have been asking the federal governments of those two countries to increase (or create) a thing called a “capital gains deduction”. A capital gains deduction is a tax write-off that individuals can use to reduce their tax liability for profits they have made on investments. The Americans presently have a limited Capital Gains Deduction; Canada does not. That is, it has no capital gains deduction at all. The real question is, why should there even be one? Canada has it right.

If you work for three years at minimum wage, you might make about $25,000. The government taxes your income. You have to pay your fair share of the costs of roads, policing, defense, health care, education, and so on. You have to work hard to earn that money. You don’t like giving a chunk of it to the government, but that’s life.

Of course, you don’t pay as much tax on $25,000 as you do on $250,000. Why not? Well, for one thing, someone who makes $250,000 uses a lot more of the resources that the government provides to make those earnings possible. Without hospitals, schools, roads, and so on, no one is going to make a lot of money. Someone who makes a lot of money does so because he has lots of buildings, vehicles, telephones, employees, and so on. He also benefits more from the protection offered by the police and the military than that poor schmuck making $25,000 does. So it seems fair enough that they pay a larger share of the costs of providing those things. Besides, he is able to pay more. It’s healthy for our society to contribute what is needed to strengthen the entire community, not just ourselves.

Suppose that instead of actually working for that money that you earned it on investments instead. Let’s say you put $5,000 into Amazon.com and a few years later that $5,000 was worth $30,000. Then you sell your shares. You have made $25,000 without having to lift a finger, except to call your broker. You took a reasonable risk, and you were amply rewarded for it.

A lot of wealthy investors would like you to believe that the $25,000 they earned on investments is special… like Ralph in the Simpsons. It should not be taxed. Why? Well, the real reason is because they are greedy and they don’t want to pay their share of the tax burden. But they will tell you that it is a good thing that people invest in the stock market and the government should encourage such investments by eliminating the tax on the profits of such investments.

Isn’t work a good thing? Isn’t it a good thing that you go to a job everyday and actually contribute something to the economy? Why shouldn’t the government encourage that, by not taxing your income?

Well, the real reason is because you don’t get to shake hands with your congressman very much, and you don’t get to sit at the head table with him at big banquets to raise money for his PAC (Political Action Committee) and you don’t get to schmooze with him on some yacht out in the Gulf of Mexico so you can explain to him, in person, just how important it is that you not have to pay taxes on your income.

You have to understand two simple things about the Capital Gains Deduction. First of all, every deduction the government gives to an individual or corporation that can be applied to taxes that are owed the government is exactly the same as a hand-out. It is the government handing cash over to these individuals or corporations. It is like welfare, except that it is for the rich.

The rich would have you believe that a deduction is different from a hand-out. They’re right: only the rich get deductions because the poor don’t have money to invest. It’s a way for the government to give even more to those who already have a lot.

The second thing you have to understand is that the profit realized from capital gains is just like any other income. There is nothing holy about it. There is nothing charitable or humanitarian about it. It is the profit earned by rich people on investments. They keep this profit. It doesn’t benefit anyone but themselves. It certainly doesn’t provide any benefits that are not also provided by a working wage.  [All right– obviously, investment is good for the economy.  My point is, it’s just as good as wages, not better.]

And these people have the unmitigated gall to tell you that this deduction will be available to all Americans, regardless of race, colour, or creed. This is possibly just about the most cynical statement ever made about the tax burden. All those welfare mothers in New York? Right. They have the same opportunity to reduce their taxes as Donald Trump. All they have to do is invest $25,000 or so in the stock market. Gosh. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling just thinking about it.

What these people are saying is this: we want to let everybody else pay for the government. We would like to keep our money.

The problem with their arguments, of course, is that people in Canada and the U.S. have already gone absolutely hog-wild with investments. Mutual funds, pension funds, unions, teachers, doctors, everyone is getting a piece of the action. The idea that the government needs to provide an additional incentive for people to invest in the stock market is absolutely bizarre.

You may think, well, everybody hates taxes. Isn’t it a good thing when you get to pay less? It sure is. So let’s all pay less. Let’s go to Ottawa and make an appointment with Paul Martin and tell him that we want a “working wage tax deduction”. We want the government to remove our tax liability (give us a hand-out) and make our wages tax-free. That would be great, wouldn’t it? The trouble is, Paul Martin would immediately say, “but where would I get the money from to run the country, if we don’t tax wages?” And we would shrug.

Ah… you may have noticed the absurd element in the above scenario. You go to Ottawa and make and appointment with Paul Martin? Ha ha!

But Paul Martin would never to meet with you, would he? Well, he might.

All you have to do is tell him that you are very, very rich.

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Cutting Taxes

I just read that there is an election in Texas, and all the
candidates are promising to reduce the size of government
and cut taxes.

Here in Ontario, Mike Harris, of the Progressive Conservatives (wouldn’t that name sit nicely on some of those Neanderthal Texans!), is also promising to cut taxes.

This puzzles me. It seems to me that we’ve been cutting
taxes and reducing the size of government since the Lyndon Johnson Administration. The Viet Nam War was the most expensive undertaking by the U.S. government at that time. I can’t remember the last time I heard a candidate promise to “increase taxes and make the government bigger”. But if everybody has been cutting taxes and reducing the size of government, it seems to me that there shouldn’t be very much of either left by now. Just two guys in a rented office in Washington, and a driver’s license bureau in Peoria.

Ronald Reagan ran against Jimmy Carter in 1979, promising to cut taxes. He criticized the Democrats as irresponsible “tax and spend” liberals. In 1979, the U.S. had a national budget deficit of about $45 Billion. Reagan won and cut taxes. He cut spending on a few things but increased spending on the military. When he left office in 1988, the U.S. national deficit was $500 Billion.

That’s the trouble with conservatives. When the deficits in most western countries were really high, they argued that governments could no longer afford to spend a lot of money on social programs and education and health care. People would have to make sacrifices for the good of the country. Workers would have to settle for smaller wages and less benefits. But then they went right out and squandered an unbelievable fortune on idiotic, ill-conceived, outrageously over-priced military hardware like the B-2 Stealth Bomber. (Remember– these are the companies that charged the Pentagon almost $1000 for a common pair of pliers, and $700 for a hammer). And the richest business and corporate leaders continued to give themselves mammoth increases in pay and benefits, while demanding that the government dump single mothers off welfare.

Is it really so surprising that “liberals” like Bill Clinton and Jean Chretien are finally eliminating those horrendous deficits? But even Clinton tends to give in to the military, which, in spite of the fact that America doesn’t have a single powerful enemy in the world, continues to spend money in the most wasteful way imaginable: on military technologies that are obsolete before they even hit production.

Think about this– the U.S. military budget reached a size that could truly be termed “colossal” at a time when most Americans believed that the Soviet Bloc was ten times as large and powerful as it is now. As it turns out, the Soviet Bloc was never anything near the military threat the Pentagon said it was. Yet the U.S. continues to spend even more today on the military than it did in the 60’s, 70’s, or 80’s. A lot of thoughtful people think that this whole Yugoslavian adventure is primarily a desperate attempt by the military to justify sustained expenditures on new toys.

One last thing about tax cuts. Conservatives like Mike Harris love to rave about how they are giving the same tax cut to everybody, rich or poor, white or black, male or female, gay or heterosexual. That’s right. Let’s see. Let’s say it’s a 4% tax reduction.

If you make $50,000 a year and pay $8,000 in taxes, Mike Harris is going to give you a hefty $320 back! Whoooeee! Don’t spend it all at once! You may want to save it for appointments with your acupuncturist!

Now, if you make $500,000 a year, and pay $100,000 in taxes, then your tax break amounts to…. hold on to your hat! $4000! That’s right. Even though you make way more money than the poor schmuck making $50,000, the province of Ontario is going to give you ten times as much money back! Sort of Robin Hood in reverse. Especially when you consider that to get that $4000, Mike Harris had to borrow $24 billion, which is now added to the province’s dept. Actually, he also got some of the money by reducing services at hospitals and schools, that benefit everybody regardless of income.

Lest you think I’m just another of those “tax and spend” liberals, let me assure you that I hate paying taxes as much as the next guy. It just peeves me off when the government borrows money from all of us to give a big tax break to a few. Let’s at least eliminate the deficit before giving out any big fat tax breaks, and lets make sure we have adequate housing, medical care, and social services too.

Do you like walking past the panhandlers in downtown Toronto? Me neither. Harris’ solution is to truck them out of down. My solution is to rearrange priorities. Second BMW for a wealthy Ontario family? Second. Affordable housing for poor people in Toronto? First. Done.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it to my dying day: even the rich benefit from a stable, safe society, and you can only have a stable, safe society if you ensure that wealth is distributed fairly among as many people as possible.

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Soma

A man writes Ann Landers:
“I am a 60-year-old man who doesn’t have any interest in anything or anyone. I’m bored with everybody I meet. I am bored with my job and bored with my life.”

Ann solves his problem: “You aren’t bored; you are depressed. But you don’t have to stay that way the rest of your life. See a doctor; and ask for an anti-depressant that will help you.”

Was there ever a better illustration of the rampant hypocrisy of our society’s stand on drug abuse? We spend billions of dollars a year trying to stamp out the recreational use of drugs by teenagers and the inner-city poor, and then turn around and, through that paragon of bourgeois values, Ann Landers, advocate that we go running for a quick hit whenever we feel a little depressed with the world.

In the meantime, a woman in Illinois has just been released after serving 20 years in prison for merely being in the same car as a drug dealer. I am not making this up. The drug dealer– classy guy, I guess– freely and immediately admitted that the three pounds of heroin were his and his alone, and that the woman didn’t even know about it.

The courts said, “We don’t care.” Those new “get tough on crimes laws” made it possible for the prosecution to convict her anyway.

While she was in prison, she acquired some legal skills and now plans to work as a paralegal. Ann Landers, however, is still on the loose.

What, really, is the difference between the Lithium this man’s doctor will probably recommend, and the cocaine sold on the street corners? They are both addictive. They are both escape hatches from the pressures of life.

The difference is, the class of people who use them.

* * *

Judy Sgro, who dared to challenge some behaviours by the police during her tenure on the Toronto Police Services Board, has been pushed out of the position of vice-chairperson. Somehow this really reassures me that the police are out there to make sure our civil liberties are well-protected.

November 1999: Once again, even though the crime rate is going down, the police in Waterloo County, Ontario, are requesting more money and more officers. So while Mike Harris keeps telling the rest of us to tighten our belts and make sacrifices for the good of the economy, the police get to go on fattening their budgets and payrolls and throwing their weight around as never before.

When the crime rate went up, the police said they needed more officers because there were more criminals. Now that the crime rate is going down…. well, I guess it’s too much to expect. Just as it might be too much to expect that the police, when the crime rate goes up, might admit that they’re not doing a good job, instead of asking for more money.

Sometimes, I’m not totally opposed to the conservative agenda. It’s the rank hypocrisy that bothers me. If Mike Harris had declared that all of Ontario, teachers, the poor, the rich, industry– everyone– is going to have to tighten their belts, I could have seen some benefit to that. But inevitably, with the Republicans in the U.S. and the Conservatives in Canada, the real agenda is not to reduce taxes, but to shift the burden from the rich to the poor. When Harris talks about reducing taxes, he’s not talking about you and me. He’s talking about those people who inhabit the private boxes at the Skydome, and with whom he’d rather spend his off-hours anyway.

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The Wrong Issue: Welfare Bums in Ontario

A surprising number of my friends and acquaintances absolutely agree with Mike Harris when he says he wants to kick those lazy free-loaders off the welfare roles and put them back to work. Why should the government subsidize able-bodied adults who should be out there working? Why am I working hard just so my tax dollars can pay for you to have a good time?

Maybe I agree, maybe I don’t. The thing is, I don’t think most people realize how much a smoke screen this issue is.

The thing is, when the government writes a check for $450 to Mabel Smith (not a real person) and her two children because she doesn’t have a job and needs to pay for her apartment and food, we cry “hand out”! Welfare bum! Parasite!

But when a corporation receives a tax exemption…. we get confused. The government doesn’t give Molson Breweries, for example, a check, so it isn’t a handout… or is it?

You tell me: what’s the difference? There isn’t any. If Molson owes the government $10 million in taxes on it’s net profits and the government says, hey, tell you what, pay me $5 million instead, what we have is the government giving Molson’s $5 million dollars as surely as if they handed it to them in small denominations in a little black briefcase. If it was true, this would be a massive government “hand-out”. It would be unfair.

Well, the government does this all the time. It does it when it allows corporations to deduct the cost of renting a box at the Skydome as a “business” expense. It does it when it allows corporations to pollute the environment without paying the cost of cleaning it up. It does it when it uses tax money to pay for sports stadiums, or when it defers taxes on a new factory, or subsidizes the cost of electricity for aluminum plants. It does it when it builds highways and bridges for the cars manufactured by Chrysler, GM, Ford, and Toyota. It does it when it helps bail out the banks that made stupid loans to third world despots who used the money to buy weapons from American manufacturers. It does it every time two businessmen go out for lunch and bill their expense accounts.

The most egregious example of this kind of lavish government subsidy of the rich is, of course, professional sports. The Minnesota Twins are, at this moment, demanding that the hardworking taxpayers of the State of Minnesota fork over about $400 million to pay for a new stadium for the Twins. The owner of the Minnesota Twins is a billionaire. But, he weeps, he can’t afford a new stadium. The old stadium, built to last 30 years, is only 15 years old, but it doesn’t have a private entrance for the boxes, you see, so those rich people actually have rub shoulders with ordinary plebes on their way to their exclusive, private, privileged seats.

At the same time, these idiot owners are offering their players contracts for up to $100 million over seven years. Everyone on the face of the earth knows that this is insane, but most people seem to think that it doesn’t directly affect them because they don’t go to many professional sporting events and if the owner wants to squander his money like that, so be it. The truth is though that you and I are paying Joe Carter $6.5 million to hit 25 home runs and bat .240 this year, because we paid for the Skydome with our tax dollars and the money that the Blue Jays didn’t have to pay for a stadium was thereby freed up to pay for their players. Just to add insult to injury, they gave the exclusive food concession rights to McDonald’s so they could charge twice the regular price for a hot dog. You would think that since we paid for the stadium we could at least get decent food at a fair price. And, of course, McDonald’s is thereby getting a government subsidy. Where are all the free market believers when it really matters?

This is madness. This is insane. This is the product of a society that is full of macho sports freaks who get visibly upset when they hear about a welfare mother spending $30 of her money on booze and cigarettes instead of food but stare with envy when see a basketball star show up with his two bodyguards. What that welfare mother should really do is learn how to play baseball.

The solution is simple. The reason Minnesota even considered subsidizing the stadium for the Twins was the threat to move the Twins to another town that would be willing to pay for a stadium. (Minnesota turned them down). It should be illegal for any town or any state or province to subsidize, with tax dollars, a professional sports stadium. All of the other subsidies should also stop, including “hidden” subsidies, like the costs of dealing with environmental damage caused by factories and industries.

Every corporation should be required to clean up after themselves– if they complain that they can’t afford to do this, they shouldn’t be in business. Should car manufacturers pay to build roads? They’ll scream bloody murder. They’ll say that it would make cars too expensive. Well, isn’t that a thought! You mean the real cost of cars is far higher than the sticker price? How about the cost of bodily injuries caused by speeding? Maybe we should have built up the public transit services instead of the highways. Maybe we should have more trains and buses today and less Firebirds and Intrepids. Read the history of the development of our cities: this idea is not as far-fetched as you think.

Finally, no bank– including the IMF– should be allowed to loan money to any government that is not certifiably democratically elected. Why should the people of Brazil or Argentina pay for F-14 fighter jets ordered by the illegal governments that ran those countries in the 1970’s? Do you know what those jets were used for? Nothing. Do you know where the money is coming from to pay back those loans? It’s coming out of the schools and hospitals and development projects that are needed to help the average people of these countries survive.

Either that, or we should learn to shut up about welfare recipients.